The Impact of Civil Rights on the Roman Empire

Hanson Wen, Year 9, Peel

The Roman Empire lasted from 27 BC to 1453 AD (1480 years) and conquered almost half of Europe and parts of Africa. It had an area of 4.4 million km² at its maximum. That’s about 20 UK’s.

But how could such a massive empire disappear? Personally, I think that the civil rights of Romans had a significant effect on the empire’s collapse.

The Nerva-Antonine Dynasty marked the beginning of the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. Everything was peaceful and pleasant until the last emperor of the dynasty, Marcus Aurelius, gave his inheritance to his natural son, Commodus. Past emperors had been chosen from Romans within the whole kingdom to be taken as the current emperor’s adopted children, and are trained to acquire the necessary skills. But Marcus Aurelius didn’t do that. He was a wise emperor and philosopher, but he had lost his first two sons, so he wanted to give his third son something - his inheritance. It meant that unlike the other heirs, Commodus did not pass any sort of test of experience, which made him ill-suited for his role as emperor. He caused chaos in the empire and was killed by his Praetorian Guard (an emperor’s bodyguard). From then on, army leaders started to fight for the place of the emperor.

The last emperor to seize power in the second century was Septimius Severus. Because he had experience in fighting for control, he knew the need for a capable army, so he disassembled the original Praetorian Guard and formed a group mostly made up of powerful northern barbarians. But before his rule, only Romans and Italians could join the Praetorian Guard.

After Severus died, his natural son, Caracalla, issued an edict that granted full Roman citizenship to every person that was born in the Roman Empire. This changed the empire significantly. Before the edict was released, the whole Roman system had been organised in a way such that people who lived in areas that were conquered by the Roman Empire would be in a lower social class (less civil rights) than the Romans. However, you could apply for Roman citizenship by serving the empire, for example, by joining the army and making a contribution; your master could just decide to give you one; or you could just bribe your way in. The reason that the whole Roman system did not collapse was that there was hope for social mobility. However, Caracalla’s edict indicated that there would no longer be social classes within the empire - everyone would be an “upper class” person. Since there was no goal to work towards, people started to find new targets and they decided to compete for the role of the emperor: the whole empire was a mess. And we could see this as the start of the Third Century Crisis.

During the Third Century Crisis, the Roman Empire nearly collapsed. It was threatened by barbarian invasions, rebellions, civil wars and political instability. There were vast amounts of inflation. The last emperor of the Third Century, Diocletian, had to split the empire into four parts to help control the “old sinking boat” that was the Roman Empire. This marked the end of the third-century crisis.

In conclusion, what I pointed out in this article is that the edict that Caracalla issued was the starting point of the decline of the Roman Empire. This is because the edict broke the social class system and caused a long-lasting civil war that nearly ran the empire out.

The author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, has the opinion that Christianity was the reason for the fall of the empire, unlike other historians which believe that the reason for the fall of the empire was inadequate emperors, who then prompted war and economic decline. Taking a distinct stance from both is my belief - one which views social instability as the main cause for the fall of the Roman Empire.